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The duelling styles of the Blackhawks and Kings have offered the rest of the NHL a choice of championship blueprints

By Ryan Dixon in Chicago

It wasn’t openly disparaging or anything that resembled trash talk, really. But decoding what Drew Doughty actually said, you quickly get a feeling for what he may have left out. Standing smack in the middle of the Los Angeles Kings dressing room following a 5–0 mid-March beatdown of the Chicago Blackhawks in Chicago, Doughty spoke matter-of-factly about the entire affair. “They’re not a very physical team,” he said. “They’re a more skilled team.” In 2016, the latter is supposed to be the highest compliment you can pay an NHL club. Coming from Doughty, though, it didn’t present that way. If we were to exploit the gap created by his missing tooth to put words in Doughty’s mouth, the sentence might be revised to: “They’re a more skilled team, but I’ll take our approach any day of the week.”

Given that the past four Stanley Cups have been won by either Chicago or Los Angeles, it’s no surprise that organizations looking to mimic their success tend to be disciples of one or the other. It’s almost as though the Kings and Hawks are feuding characters on a reality-TV show, and the rest of the league is left to decide if they identify with Team Talent or Team Tough. The game’s current ethos ensures more squads are Blackhawks-like in their approach, but L.A.’s hard-nosed hockey is not without its admirers. And with the NHL’s second season upon us, both techniques will once again be put under the annual two-month stress test.

With nearly 300 career games and two Cup titles as a member of the Blackhawks, small, speedy Kris Versteeg would seem to have spent most of his time on the appropriate side of the rivalry. But having been acquired by Los Angeles from the Carolina Hurricanes before this year’s trade deadline, Versteeg is now nesting with his one-time nemeses. Holding court in the Kings dressing room a few hours before he went out and burned his old team with a goal and an assist, Versteeg couldn’t help but laugh while reflecting on what it was like to line up against L.A. “You knew you had to keep your head up for 60 minutes or someone was going to take it off for you,” he says.

That reputation is something the Kings cherish. Hockey—in a sweeping, collective sense—has made a distinct turn from muscle toward puck-manoeuvring, but this is still a confrontation game populated in no small way by boys from the Prairies. If the Montreal Canadiens once, in the eyes of some, saved the sport from the brutality of the Philadelphia Flyers by sweeping the Broadstreet Bullies in the 1976 Final, it’s almost as though, in a much subtler way, L.A. is stumping for the fact that strength and intimidation remain effective tools in a competition where rigid barriers rim the entire playing surface. During that dismantling at the hands of the Kings last month, Chicago’s defence corps was credited with a total of seven hits; Los Angeles had two blueliners—Luke Schenn and Brayden McNabb—who each equalled or exceeded that total on their own, which is especially hard to do in another team’s rink. “We have a lot of guys in here who take pride in finishing hits and making the game hard,” says defenceman Rob Scuderi, who won the 2012 championship with L.A. and returned this year via Pittsburgh and, briefly, Chicago. “When you look at the Kings the past few years, the thing that’s made them successful—especially in a seven-game series—is wearing the other team down.”

One of the clubs that’s felt the full weight of California’s crushers is the St. Louis Blues, who’ve dropped two series to L.A. (and one to the Blackhawks) since 2012. Last summer’s biggest bet on power came when Los Angeles—after missing the 2015 post-season—doubled down on its game plan by acquiring Milan Lucic from another team he seemed born to play for, the Boston Bruins. Less striking, though still significant, was the Blues’ decision to send darting right-winger T. J. Oshie to the Washington Capitals for the more direct game of six-foot-three, 213-lb. starboard-sider Troy Brouwer. While Oshie drew the plum assignment of skating on a line with Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom for much of the season in Washington, Brouwer—who does not possess the obvious offensive gifts of Oshie—was proof that already-punishing St. Louis believes getting over the playoff hump involves finding more players who can score second-chance goals from within spitting distance of the net.

If the Blues seem to be eyeing the Hollywood script for wins, the Dallas Stars—in a much more flagrant way—are at the top of the list when it comes to teams putting their money on the Chicago model. Last summer, the Stars acquired right-winger Patrick Sharp from the Hawks to add to their existing mix of offence-minded forwards. Dallas also inked former Chicago defenceman Johnny Oduya to a free-agent contract—both clubs rely on blueliners to drive the play forward. The Blues and Kings, on the other hand, get the puck in and maintain control with dominating board play from the forwards. In their own end, the Hawks depend more on zone coverage, while Los Angeles—the stingiest team in the league—has its defencemen go man-to-man with attackers, secure in the knowledge that a forward will always come down low and lend support.

Naturally, teams can’t be painted with a single stripe—this isn’t a straight case of steak versus sushi. There is overlap, and everybody cribs from each other in the league, but there’s no doubt that competing schools of thought are at play. “You definitely see the possession game compared to that straight-up-and-down, north-south game,” says Chicago right-winger Andrew Desjardins, who joined the club last season from the San Jose Sharks.

Before hosting L.A., the Blackhawks took part in a routine morning skate. In the early minutes, before the real drills began, the Hawks were skating in two separate loops on the United Center ice, forming a whirl up the middle when the two sections mixed together like a milkshake in a blender. Set back 20 feet from the action, coach Joel Quenneville hunched over a cluster of pucks and intermittently slid one in the general direction of a player’s stick. Even when the Blackhawks are just getting limber, they’re rehearsing for the moment in a game when you spot a puck through a sea of legs, get it on your blade and keep it there. That mindset immediately caught the attention of winger Dale Weise after a pre-deadline deal brought him to the Windy City. “It’s night and day from what I’m used to,” says Weise, who came from a chip-and-chase approach with the Canadiens. “Just the quality of defence Chicago has, the way they move the puck, the way they can skate, the way [the whole team] possesses the puck. It’s not like any team I’ve been a part of. You have the puck the whole time, you’re not chasing the game.”

It’s that command that has everyone—including L.A.—pursuing Chicago in the big picture. Whatever old-school pride can be derived from deploying an edgy style, the Hawks’ three titles in the past six years serve as the last word in this debate. Of course, that could all change in a matter of months should the Kings win their third championship in five years, or the Blues find their first in franchise history. “Contrasting styles have always made for entertaining hockey,” says Scuderi.

And that’s the real bottom line in this back and forth.

This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine. Photo credits, from top: Jonathan Daniel/Getty; Juan Ocampo/Getty Images